Midnight Special - Musings on the current situation (kind of like the State of the Union but different)

My take on a few things.

The 116^th Congress is underway and it’s clear the two oligarchy controlled political parties will accomplish nothing that will substantively help the working class of this country (the bottom 80% that lives paycheck to paycheck) nor even attempt to solve any of the crucial issues facing this country and the planet.  

For those that give credit to some duopoly politicians like Sanders, Gabbard and Ocasio-Cortez for “talking about socialism and antiwar”, and give any legitimacy to the duopoly shenanigans, talk is cheap, especially when it comes to American politicians.  Look at your history, some have always talked about it.  If you haven't figured out by now how our national political system really works, then I don't know what to say.  It was well known more than a hundred years ago and actually since it's inception. 

As Wikipedia puts it:

“The One Hundred Sixteenth United States Congress is the next meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It is scheduled to meet in Washington, D.C. from January 3, 2019 to January 3, 2021, during the final two years...”

So they're "meeting" now for two years, until 2021, with Trump as President.   Two years, particularly in duopoly bullshit time, goes by pretty quickly.  There won’t be any “Green Deal”.  There won’t be Medicare for All.  There won’t be an end to imperialism and any of the currently 195 wars the U.S. is waging across the planet in a frantic attempt at pursuing it’s Manifest Destiny to rule the world. 

Ridiculously and shamefully, the next election “season” has already started in the form of the democratic party primary.  Most progressives, who should at least be working to pressure the current Congress to get it’s shit together (like they've all said needs to be done), are lining up to debate who’s going to run, who are the front runners, who is getting the shaft, who can beat Trump?  Battle lines are  being drawn between the Bernie/Tulsi supporters and the Harris/Booker/Warren supporters as exhibited by the partisan infighting between those at the conservative democratic party blog the Daily Kos, i.e., the Clinton wing, vs. the various offshoot Bernie/Tulsi blogs, same as last election “season".  I think it's a soap opera effect for most, they get off on the daily bullshit about their favorite politicians, even while complaining about it.  It’s truly a never ending charade because we don’t live in a fucking democracy and most claim to know it.  Somehow, that always seems to be forgotten when they trot out their next great white/black/brown hopes for a position, the Office of the President, we should fucking abolish before it drives us all to the grave. 

Nick Brana is the national director of the Movement for a People’s Party and organizer with the Labor-Community Campaign for an Independent Party. Brana was a big Bernie Sanders supporter involved in his campaign for the Democratic party’s selection to run for president.  As he puts it, 

“When the dust settled in November of 2018, it turned out that the “Blue Wave” had been a corporate wave. The party establishment had successfully blocked all but two of the progressives who challenged incumbent Democrats. Only two progressives unseated House Democrats in all of 2018: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley. There are 435 members of Congress.

The other two progressives who are often discussed in the media basically swapped seats with progressives who used to sit there: Rashid Tlaib took John Conyers’ seat and Ilhan Omar took Keith Ellison’s seat."

Brana goes thru Seven Major Ways that Progressives have Sought to Reform the Democratic Party Since 2016. And how the Party has Thwarted them All.  Worth a read but he summarizes as follows. 

"Over the past three years, progressives have engaged in various efforts to gain influence in the Democratic Party, democratize the Party, and elect progressives to office — and the Party has thwarted them and consolidated its power at every step of the way.

In the midterms, the Party that came back to Washington looks virtually indistinguishable from the one that existed before the midterms. In fact, there the Democrats are more corporate than ever, as they were the ones that the DCCC picked to run. The DCCC in turn worked with the finance-friendly Blue Dog Democrats on candidate recruitment.

The “Blue Wave” was another corporate wave.

So here we are three years after progressives embarked on this venture to try to reform the Democratic Party, and we’re back to square one essentially, with many saying, “Well, let’s try and run a presidential candidate again and hope for the best.”

"Back to square one".  It's like Ground Hogs Day, all we need is Bill Murray playing some progressive who cognitive dissonances himself to death. Obviously the democratic party establishment let the dogs loose as early as possible to distract their followers from the fact that they won't accomplish anything. Progressives are lining up behind their favorites, taking straw polls, dissing each side. Same old bullshit, different day.  Meanwhile, progressive heroine AOC goes on tour to promote the Green New Deal which isn't hers, even thought the democrats, the oligarchy media. and AOC herself,  pretend it is.

Brana's epiphany could have been earlier if he had just read this quote from Eugene Debs in the year 1904.

The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles.

Eugene V. Debs 

"The Socialist Party and the Working Class". Eugene V. Debs' opening speech as Presidential candidate of the Socialist Party in Indianapolis, Indiana, www.marxists.org. September 1,1904.  

Or this quote from W.E.B. Dubois in 1956, from his famous essay, "Why I Won't Vote". 

In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no “two evils” exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say. There is no third party.

http://www.blackeconomicdevelopment.com/why-i-wont-vote-by-web-du-bois-the-nation-20-october-1956/

Or any of a great number of comments and commentary on the fabled political system our rulers insist we call democracy.  

People of great stature have been saying the same basic things that Brana has concluded about this duopoly party political system since this UN-representative system was begun, and particularly since the great capitalist surge via the industrial revolution. It should be settled, but the masses are trained, indoctrinated, lied to, whatever it takes to keep them from challenging the ruling class setup.  It works, it keeps working.  Believe me, even when you tell people over and over, they won't get it unless they really want to.  It's the illusion thing, destroying ones illusions is a difficult thing.  You have to want it. 

Brana’s approach is another political party.  There’s a lot working against that under the circumstances, the biggest being time.  We’re well into the 21^st century, a century and a half since the industrial revolution and getting toward eight billion people on the planet.  Even if one doesn’t believe the world is going to end in 12 years like Ocasio-Cortez if we don’t stop flying airplanes and cow fart, time is not on our side.  Building another political party up to the point of having an impact in the Congress and Senate, i.e., by having politicians from that party elected, could take decades if it can be done at all.  Since WWII, there have only been 4 non duopoly politicians elected to the Congress and Senate.  Four, in 75 years. 

And that’s going to change now?  I just saw some news about how the Democratic party is promoting some legislation that would slash funding for the Green Party.  The duopoly will do everything it can to prevent competition from other political parties.  

Maybe it’s worth an effort, far better than the ridiculously time tested waste of time of trying to “reform” the democratic party, or move it to the left, or “start a conversation”, which Bernie, Tulsi and AOC supporters like to trot out to justify their continued attachment to a political system, and thus a political party, they can't envision differently.  Like, even if you grant credit to them, it's not going to matter, the democratic party is fully controlled by the money makers. 

In the end however, it’s going to take a movement of some kind independent from the election process.  Along the lines of the Yellow Vest movement in France (and now elsewhere) which is focused on democracy, or even an Occupy II with all the demands whittled down to one.  There has to be a clear objective – democracy.  Whatever we do, a Green New Deal, Medicare for All Improved, an end to U.S. imperialism and global militarism, it has to be done democratically.  Democrats don't get the final say, republicans don't get the final say, the duopoly doesn't get the final say, the People should have the final say. That should be the first order of business for any Revolution.  Any efforts otherwise won't cut it.  Any efforts otherwise, like for a third party or for the democratic party, are taking resources away from what should be done.  

We're in a class war as well as a war for humanity.  As Warren Buffet said, 
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”. 
They're kicking our ass more like it.  The democratic and republican parties represent Buffet's class. They have to be considered opponents in the class war of the rich against everybody else.  It's only with resolve like that can the people challenge the oligarchy.